Planet Money
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Planet Money
Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy. At Planet Money, we explore the forces that shape our lives and bring you along for the ride. Don't just understand the economy – understand the world.Wanna go deeper? Subscribe to Planet Money+ and get sponsor-free episodes...
Atal Berriak
463 atal
You bet your life insurance
Some of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a...
Currency Chaos in Argentina (Summer School)
Just about everyone in Argentina is an expert in inflation and whether they like it or not, economic flexibility. Can we learn from them?
Older workers aren’t retiring. Should they be forced to?
When workers past retirement age can’t afford to retire — that’s one thing. When they can, and just don’t want to — that’s trickier.
It u...
Sand heists and property rights in the Caribbean (Summer School)
Imagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop dow...
What makes a toy go viral
Squishy, slimy, fidgety toys are having a moment. But it’s more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media fueled trend – these toys are reshaping ho...
How to beat the resource curse in Norway (Summer School)
Let’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it change...
Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School)
Let’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity.
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Big Lettuce meets Small Intestine
The cyclospora outbreak that’s sickening thousands of Americans got us interested in the rise of Big Lettuce, and the challenges of keeping it clean. ...
New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast
In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake o...
Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.?
As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s profess...
Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)
China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems.
High-speed trains that connect eve...
Seven allegedly fake Chanel bags vs The RealReal
Once upon a time, if you wanted to buy a luxury brand item secondhand (say, a Chanel handbag) you had to have an in. There was no easy way to find one...
Our mission: Find the world’s best economic ideas (Summer School World Tour)
Come along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home!
From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway...
How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory)
Lionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer in...
Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?
Will limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices?
The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan...
We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?
In the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even pl...
Before Kalshi and Polymarket there was the Iowa Electronic Markets
Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away.
There was an entire political e...
The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough
Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious...
Can computer hackers get inside your mind?
The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.
The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear devel...
It’s my tree. Why can’t I cut it down?
Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might hav...
Two indicators for lowering the rent
One specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding...
Why is there a supplement craze if they don’t even work?
One reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation.
On today's show, we tell the sto...
There's no business like dough business
Have you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might on...
The sneaky way companies get new chemicals into our food
99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food...
The leaked tapes that show how the rich avoid taxes
Tax avoidance -- that is, legally reducing your tax bill -- is as American as apple pie. But the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is often a...
The giant factory town that might be a giant mistake
How does a poor country become a rich country? There's a simple blueprint — or at least, that's what many economists used to believe. But over the yea...
Vacation and why Americans take so little
Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice.
Every single worker in the...
Jerome Powell and the Future of Fed Independence
If you have a credit card, hope to buy a house, or just want stable grocery prices – let’s talk about the future of Fed independence!
It’...
The secret meeting that launched OPEC
Recently, a listener wrote in with a question about OPEC and oil prices. She was prepping for a camping trip… thinking about how much it costs to fil...
Diary of a WNBA negotiator
Today the WNBA season tips off, but Dallas Wings veteran forward Alysha Clark has already won a high-stakes competition. She – and a Nobel Prize winni...
How we got free agents in baseball
Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game’s highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series thr...
How to make a BOOK into a bestseller
In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how d...
Spirit Airlines and the future of cheap flights
It’s way more than fuel costs that pushed Spirit Airlines to the brink of liquidation and led President Trump to muse about “buying” them. Many low co...
Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China
At one point in history, one U.S. company monopolized the rare earths industry. Then China took over the industry. Can the U.S. bring it back?
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Live: Anthropic co-founder on AI and jobs
We talk with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Chief Economist at Redfin Daryl Fairweather about two of the biggest issues of our time: AI and housi...
Do prediction market bettors make anything better?
Have you noticed a lot of young people getting into antenna-maxxing as alpha? Or, maybe searching for any bit of copium after they fat-fingered and go...
How to get through the Strait of Hormuz
The United States has been at war with Iran since February 28th. And for a month and a half, Iran’s main leverage over the U.S. has been their control...
BOOKstore Economics
How do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore i...
A pro-worker experiment in private equity
Live event info and tickets here.
If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You m...
Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation
Live event info and tickets here.
When ingredient costs skyrocket, companies have three basic options: They can raise their prices (a so...